Skip to main content
SOMETHING OLD
Nate Scheible’s 2017 album Fairfax is due a reissue in February on Warm Winters Ltd. It’s based on audio diaries from the mysterious woman known only by the name of the Virginia town where she lives, and though her narration is cryptic enough at first to suggest Scheible is aiming for an oneiric creepiness, the album gradually becomes almost unbearably poignant as we get to know the circumstances of her life. It’s a real tear-jerker, and a cult classic in the making.
SOMETHING NEW
Bay Area-via-Texas producer Seven Davis Jr. makes rhythmically tricky house music treated with so much compression that it sounds like it’s ducking in and out of a black hole. His singing on his new album, I See the Future, evokes classic, pitched-down minimal-house vocal performances from artists like Matthew Dear and Nicolas Jaar, but his beats draw from a rich tradition of freaky funk and acid rock, full of synth squiggles and thick layers of stoned ad libs.
SOMETHING LOCAL
As OAA, local producer AJ Wilson makes electronic music that sounds like it’s been washed in an industrial-strength bath of corrosive chemicals. Every kick drum and snare is like a bumped elbow or stubbed toe. And if you don’t mind being battered and bruised a bit, his album Contracted Reality from last year is for you. Watch out for Enemy of Love, his just-announced collab album with local heavy noise-rockers the Body, which drops Feb. 18.
SOMETHING ASKEW
KMRU’s Peel sounds like what a GameBoy dreams about. His slabs of slow-moving drone are as static and glacial as ambient music gets, but they’re treated with a layer of distortion that makes them sound like they could be sourced from a circuit-bent game console. It’s bliss-out music with an edge, and it’s no wonder he was one of the last artists personally signed by late experimental-music titan Peter Rehberg to his influential Editions Mego label.